The Kievan Letter is an early 10th-century (ca. 930)[1] letter thought to be written by representatives of the Jewish community in Kiev. The letter, a Hebrew-language recommendation written on behalf of one member of their community, was part of an enormous collection brought to Cambridge by Solomon Schechter from the Cairo Geniza. It was discovered in 1962 during a survey of the Geniza documents by Norman Golb of the University of Chicago. The letter is dated by most scholars to around 930 CE. Some think (on the basis of the "pleading" nature of the text, mentioned below) that the letter dates from a time when Khazars were no longer a dominant force in the politics of the city. According to Marcel Erdal, the letter does not come from Kiev but was sent to Kiev.[2]

Contents

Some scholars point to a district in Kievan Podil named after the Khazars (called "Kozare"), which indicates to some that Turkic Khazars did live in Kiev. The Khazars apparently played a significant role in the economic vitality of the city, importing caviar, fish, and salt into Kiev.

If so, it might at first glance suggest that Khazar control over Kiev, in some form or another, continued well into the tenth century, significantly later than the traditional date for conquest by Oleg, 882. On the other hand, from the letter itself it seems that the Khazar authorities could do little to help the Jewish community of Kiev; the letter itself had ended up in Egypt, and the beleaguered alms-seeker had presumably travelled thousands of miles in his search for relief. The identity and status of the reviewing, turcophone officer is therefore ambiguous. It would seem more likely that the letter was reviewed in Khazaria at a time when Khazar Jewish power had waned not only in Kiev but in the heartland itself (sometime in the 11th century).[citation needed]

Linguists are interested in the letter because the names of the community members are of Turkic, Slavic, and Hebrew origins (for example, names such as: "Hanukkah," "Yehudah," "Gostata," and "Kiabar"). There is some disagreement as to whether these Jews were Israelites who had taken local names, or whether their names indicate Turkic or Slavic origins. The debate is complicated by the presence of the name Kiabar Kohen. According to Omeljan Pritsak, this name indicates that non-Israelite Khazars adopted the status of Kohen, possibly because they had formed a pre-conversion priestly caste. A simpler explanation is that Israelite Jews in Khazaria adopted Khazar Turkic names, much in the same way that Jews, including prominent rabbis, had adopted Aramaic, Persian, Arabic, Greek, and German names.

Recent studies determined that at least one of the names of signatories is Slavic and that it is likely that the signatories with non-Jewish names, were Jews who adopted local names.[3]

The letter may contain the only written record of the Khazar language extant today - the single word-phrase "I have read (it)," though Erdal argues against this hypothesis and favours Bolgar-Chuvash (hakurüm from the reconstructed verb *okï-, 'call out, recite, read'), and suggests that it originated in the Danube-Bulgar region.[4] (Similar inscriptions, in Latin and Greek are found in Byzantine documents from roughly the same period.)